Paved with good intentions

[unixronin]

Via cracked.com, Bitmines, and paulesyllabic¹, the five most popular safety laws that don’t actually work.

Highlights:

• “Traffic calming” costs more lives than it saves.  “One report from Boulder, Colorado suggests that for every life saved by traffic calming, as many as 85 people may die because emergency vehicles are delayed.  It found response times are typically extended by 14% by speed-reduction measures.  Another study conducted by the fire department in Austin, Texas showed an increase in the travel time of ambulances when transporting victims of up to 100%.”
• [1997 article]  A 1997 study found that in 1994-1995, crime (both violent and overall) decreased by three times as much in states without Three Strikes laws as in states with them.  In eight of the thirteen states that had three-strikes laws, crime actually increased during that period.
• Fully half of the 233 Amber Alerts issued in 2004 were for children who were in no danger.  48 of the 233 alerts — more than 20% — were for children who hadn’t even been abducted.
• Sex offender registries don’t distinguish between serial rapists and somebody who took a leak in public while drunk.  Besides, 95% of sexual assault victims, child or adult, already know their attacker anyway.

And I’m sure I don’t have to point out the utter stupidity behind zero-tolerance policies to anyone here... not to mention the rampant abuses.

[1]  Not necessarily in that order.  Or any order.

Comments

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

they had 3 amber alert phone bank calls in the last couple years in my town.

in all cases, the people they were looking for "wandered off" and were found at a friend's house. absolute over-reaction. plus bad parenting.

iirc, they did not call the amber alert OFF after the fact for at least 1 of them.

they also had some kind of private alert thing going on where some lady lost her prize show dog, and somehow managed to get an entire community on patrol looking for it. we had a lot of crazy people driving around here, at speed, in a private community, for hours, despite being told to slow down (EFF EWE!), and that nobody saw their stupid dog, and SLOW DOWN THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY YOU ALMOST HIT A KID (EFF EWE!) - fine, we're calling the cops - SCREECH! see ya!

the highway amber alerts i've seen, involved a "legal abduction" of a father asserting his rights, a girl on a joy ride with her boyfriend and freaked parents (and the girl was a legal adult...).

apparently the old 24-48 hour rule is thrown out the window to test these new systems.

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